Latest Stories

divers
Articles

Jill Heinerth nearly died when she was trapped by ocean currents inside an Antarctic iceberg. She's one of the world's most accomplished underwater cave divers, often exploring caves no one's ever been in, which show her "the veins of the Earth."

Length: 
14:58
cave paintings
Audio

Renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog was awe-struck when he saw the Chauvet cave paintings dating back 32,000 years. "You can see clearly that this is the beginning of modern man," he says.

Length: 
3:41
chess fight
Articles

Chess has a reputation as a highly-intelligent, elegant game. But sportswriter Brin-Jonathan Butler says it’s also addictive — and sadistic.

Length: 
11:30
Carin Bondar
Video

Biologist Carin Bondar has devoted her career to exploring the myriad ways animals mate in the wild, and shared a few of the ingenious ways animals find each other, breed, and rear offspring.

Length: 
7:51
Dasha Kelly Hamilton
Video

Performer Dasha Kelly Hamilton explains why all women need to be intimately familiar with the challenge and thrill of catching a fly.

Length: 
5:19
AI hand from space
Articles

Futurist Amy Webb tells us we can have a utopian future — if we are vigilant.

Length: 
9:29
Steve Paulson, Jeff Schloss and David Sloan Wilson
Video

Evolutionary biologists Jeff Schloss and David Sloan Wilson joined Steve Paulson to explore how group selection can explain altruism.

Length: 
18:56
Love in 36 Questions
Video

Can you fall in love with anyone?  Maybe, if you ask the right questions.

Length: 
5:42
Anne Strainchamps and Lisa Diamond
Video

Psychologist Lisa Diamond offers a radical new understanding of sexual orientation, arguing that it’s much more fluid than previously believed.

Length: 
12:24
Life springs eternal
Sonic Sidebar

Even facing the bleakest outcomes that climate change might inflict on our planet, we have to have faith in a new future. That’s something writer Anne Lamott has been struggling with too.

Length: 
2:22
AI robots and dragons
Articles

Victor LaValle is the editor of a collection of short stories where — even in dire situations and terrifying futures — everyone has a place, and a chance at being the hero.

Length: 
11:08
Common
Articles

Rapper Common is eager to talk about hope – specifically, how we can make hope in our lives.

Length: 
11:58
Megan Stielstra
Bookmarks

Author Megan Stielstra tells the story of how she first crossed paths with "The Chronology of Water," Lidia Yuknavitch's award-winning memoir — the anti-memoir that broke new ground for speaking with candor about the joy and the pain of living.

Length: 
05:32
Lydia Hester
Articles

Lydia Hester is 17. A junior in high school with a pile of AP classes. And she has a nearly full-time job as an activist. She does all that, and she’s not even old enough to vote. And yes, that really bugs her.

Length: 
08:06
Deray Mckesson
Articles

Organizer and activist DeRay Mckesson says hoping for big change is great, but it doesn't go anywhere without small actions where people take care of one another.

Length: 
12:25
Man along an unnamed road in Obafemi Owode, Nigeria.
Articles

Chigozie Obioma grew up in Nigeria — he’s a novelist and teaches at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. He says that despite rampant corruption, poverty, and an HIV/AIDS crisis, Nigerians are definitely more optimistic than most. He explains why.

Length: 
9:11
bright brain
Articles

How neuroscientist Tali Sharot accidentally stumbled on what’s known as “the optimism bias” — our hard-wired belief that our future will be better than our past or present.

Length: 
12:21
Articles

Throughout history, we've been surrounded by substances that seemed benign and innocent in our food, in our gardens, in our medicine cabinets — until we realized they could be slowly killing us.

Adam Kucharski virus graphic
Articles

The COVID-19 pandemic was some epidemiologist’s nightmare when Adam Kucharski was writing "Rules of Contagion." The book draws on ideas from “outbreak science” to illuminate how and why viruses spread.

Length: 
14:03
Vaccine vial
Audio

Married couple Ilan Kedan and Christina Lombardi work at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, and they each decided to participate in two separate medical trials for COVID-19 vaccines.

Length: 
9:32
A vaccine bottle with a looming virus
Articles

Science writer Sarah Zhang has reported extensively on the newly-developed COVID-19 vaccines — how they work, the logistical and psychological challenges of the roll out, and what they mean for our society.

Length: 
10:56
TC Boyle
Bookmarks

How does a hummingbird survive in subzero winter temperatures? Why endure them at all? Author T.C. Boyle couldn’t understand why the small bird would be anywhere near his mountain writing retreat, but he found the answer in Bernd Heinrich’s “Winter World.”

Length: 
3:01
Polar bear
Audio

Depending on where you live, winter can be tough to get through.  It’s cold, it gets dark early, the weather’s messy.  Naturalist Bernd Heinrich shares some amazing stories about the ingenious ways animals survive winter.

Length: 
8:19
walrus
Audio

Knowing how animals survive winter is good, but how do animals sound in winter? For that we turn to Douglas Quin, an award-winning sound designer and composer whose album "Fathom" contains underwater field recordings from the polar regions of the earth.

Length: 
7:09
Wheelchair
Articles

Writer Haddayr Copley-Woods says she's been trying to figure out how to deal with unsolicited help since she was first diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. For the helpers, it’s a nice thing to do. For her, it’s patronizing.

Length: 
10:28
Daily touch is about moving your skin
Articles

What happens when an entire nation is social distancing and avoiding contact? Dr. Tiffany Field, founder and director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami Medical School, tells Anne about the power of therapeutic touch. 

Length: 
10:48
Empty New York streets
Articles

In Lake Mills, Wisconsin, a retired school teacher named Kitty O'Meara wrote a short poem at lunch one day and posted it to friends on Facebook. A week later, it had been shared by Deepak Chopra, Oprah Winfrey and millions of other people.

Length: 
5:12
Dafne Keene as Lyra Silvertongue on HBO's "His Dark Materials"
Articles

The return of HBO's adaptation of Philip Pullman's classic series "His Dark Materials" is the perfect time to dive into his new trilogy, "The Book of Dust." The tales of an older Lyra Belacqua probe more deeply into the central question of his earlier books: What is the nature of consciousness? 

Audio

Ken Nordine is the epitome of jazz poetry, nicknamed "the Voice." Best known for his "Word Jazz" series, this poem is one he did for a paint company. The paint company is long forgotten, but the poem lives on.

Length: 
1:35
Audio

Melissa Joulwan — A.K.A. "Melicious" — didn't know what to expect when she joined a roller derby team. What she found was camaraderie, a new athleticism and personal empowerment.

Length: 
12:01

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